http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
MILLIONAIRES AREN'T EXACTLY what they used to be. By our grandfathers' standards -- maybe we should
use our grandmothers' standards -- today's millionaires are hardly worth throwing back into the
gene pool.

The millionaire of mythology and schoolgirl fantasy chased chorus girls without the help of television
game-show hosts, sipped champagne from silver slippers of his own choosing and used dollar bills,
or maybe even twenties, to light his cigars. If he were using today's bills, he might not bother, so dim
would be the flame.

A million dollars today just doesn't burn very long. Nor even billions. Everett Dirksen, the late
senator from Illinois and leader of the Republican minority in several Congresses of decades past,
once tried to persuade his Democratic colleagues to cut a little fat from the federal budget with the
argument that "if we save a billion dollars here, a billion dollars there, pretty soon we're talking
about real money.''

So we can sympathize, at least a little, with Darva Conger, the California blonde (it's a generic term,
like a television "network blonde'') who married a millionaire and quickly decided she didn't want
him, after all.

"I don't think I was thinking clearly,'' Darva Conger told a television interviewer. "I committed an
error in judgment.''

She tried to be nice about it, depending on your definition of nice. She spent some time with her
new millionaire helpmeet, Rick Rockwell, but none of it, she insisted emphatically, in bed. "I was
very uncomfortable around him,'' she said. "He's just not a person that I would ordinarily have a
friendly relationship with.'' They spent their honeymoon in separate rooms. She said she told him: "I
don't have those feelings for you, I can't let you believe that I do.''

She told a television interviewer: "I never, ever considered having sexual relations with him.'' This is
modern marriage? And then she added, quaintly for our times: "I would never consider having
sexual relations with anyone I just met.'' It's a good thing she was trying to be nice about it. The
poor guy couldn't show his face if she had been really mean about it.

She doesn't want anyone to think she was digging for gold, either. "I never had any claim to his
money,'' she said. "It's his money.''

Mr. Rockwell's millions, as it turns out, are mostly tied up in real estate. His bride was disappointed
to learn that his mansion in Southern California was actually "somewhat dinky.'' We can believe
that, given the incredible boom in real estate in California, where developers are building $4 million

dollar houses in Orange County on speculation, and millionaires, mostly married and of several
grades of multi-, are snapping them up.

Mrs. Rockwell, like so many modern young women, obviously had no nosy-Parker aunts to do the
Dun and Bradstreet, to say nothing of a scan of the police perp sheet. Such are the deprivations of
modern maidenhood. The Fox Network, for whom "Do You Want to Marry a Millionaire,'' is this
season's centerpiece of tacky, was supposed to have done a background check on Mr. Rockwell
before the ceremony. If it had, it would have learned that a California judge issued a restraining
order against Mr. Rockwell in 1991, after an ex-fiancee, one Debbie Goyne, said Mr. Rockwell
had hit her and threatened to kill her.

Not so, said the gallant Mr. Rockwell, but, well, he did let a little of the air out of her tires, and he
does have a temper, but "it doesn't manifest itself too often.'' This is just the kind of stuff that in an
earlier time and in a smaller place Aunt Gertrude, tapping into a network of spies that the CIA might
envy, could have learned in an hour.

If all that were not enough, the new, if temporary, Mrs. Rockwell has taken a psychic beating in the
media, where she has been likened to a prostitute for selling herself in a public auction. But this is
harsh, and unfair.

Diamonds have been a girl's best friend for lo these many years, and wise young women have
always given their beaus a good once-over with an appraising eye. A lot of girls have been swept
off their feet by hunks with nothing in the bank, and mamas and daddies have been just as impatient
with them, as we might be with the likes of Darva Conger Rockwell. Once upon a time a father
would have invited Mr. Rockwell into the library -- or den, in our own time -- to discuss his
"prospects.'' In the absence of an available father, Darva's mistake was counting on a
network-television producer to do that for her.

Nevertheless, she can dine out on this story for the rest of her life, and besides, she has an
engagement ring ($35,000), the prizes ($100,000) and the honeymoon, separate rooms and
separate beds and all, to remember him by. And she gets to keep the
car.

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